Georges Canguilhem

Georges Canguilhem is a Philosophe and a epistemologist French, born the June 4th 1904 with Castelnaudary and deceased the September 11th 1995 with Marly-the-King.

Biography

He obtains in 1927 his aggregation of philosophy, before teaching in different Lycée S. In 1941, Georges Canguilhem is named part-time lecturer at the university of Strasbourg. He validates a famous thesis of medical philosophy in 1943: the normal one and pathological the (PUF). That year, Gestapo invades the university of Clermont-Ferrand where that of Strasbourg had been folded up. Already engaged in Resistance with Emmanuel d' Astier of Vigerie, Canguilhem manages to escape and takes important responsabilities in the direction unified for the resistance movements in Auvergne. In June 1944, it takes part in the battle of the Mount-Mouchet, the south of Clermont-Ferrand. It creates there a hospital of countryside from which it organizes the evacuation under the fire of the enemy. It is named director of the General inspection of philosophy in 1948. Seven years later, it is named professor with the Sorbonne and director of the Institute of history of sciences, succeeding Gaston Bachelard. It will occupy this station until 1971, and will count among its pupils and disciples Michel Foucault, François Dagognet, Gilles Deleuze, Dominique Lecourt or Donna Haraway. In 1987, it receives the Gold medal of CNRS.

A philosophy of science

Principal philosophical works of Canguilhem are the Normal one and pathological the (published in 1943, and supplemented at the time of a republication in 1966) and the Knowledge of the life .

The first work is a research deepened on the nature and the direction of the concept of Normalité in Médecine and Biologie, but also on the production and the institutionalization of the scientific knowledge. Today still, the Normal one and the pathological fundamental remainder in the field of medical anthropology and the history of the ideas, and knew a great repercussion, in particular by the means of the influence that Canguilhem exerted on Foucault.

The second is a study in connection with the specificity of biology as a science, the historical and conceptual significance of vitalism, and the possibility of not conceiving the organization on the basis of technique or model mechanists which would make it possible to reduce it to a machine, but rather of considering it under the angle of its relation with the medium where he saw, its survival (and consequently its relation with the " erreurs" genetics and with " the anormalité") in this medium, and its statute beyond of simple a " summon parties". Canguilhem takes party in this direction vigorously, criticizing the Vitalisme XVIIIe and XIXe century, but also warning against the reduction of biology at physics. Indeed, according to him, such a reduction would deprive biology of its own research field, by transforming according to an ideological process of the being alive of mechanical structures included in a physicochemical balance inapt to give an account of the specificity of the organizations and complexity of the life. Later, in Ideology and rationality and its History of the life sciences , it developed these criticisms.

Quotations

"When the doctor substituted for the complaint of the patient and his subjective representation of the causes of sound badly, which rationality constrained to recognize like the truth of its disease, the doctor therefore did not reduce the subjectivity of the patient. He allowed him a badly different possession of sound. And if he did not seek of to dispossess it, by affirming to him that he is reached of no disease, he did not always succeed in dispossessing it of his belief in itself sick, and sometimes even of his kindness in itself sick. In short, it is impossible to cancel in the objectivity of the medical knowledge subjectivity of the lived experiment of the patient. It is thus not in this impotence that it is necessary to seek the failure characteristic of the exercise of medicine. It takes place in the lapse of memory, in its direction freudien, of the capacity of unfolding specific to the doctor who would allow him to project itself in the situation of patient, the objectivity of his knowledge being not repudiated but put in reserve . Because it is allocated to the doctor to be represented who he is a potential patient and who he is not better assured than are to it its patients to succeed, if necessary, to substitute its knowledge for its angoisse." in the normal one and pathological the .

Its work

Test on some problems concerning the normal one and pathological the (1943) republication under the title normal and the pathological one, increased New reflections concerning the normal one and pathological the (1966), 9th réed. PUF/Quadrige, Paris, 2005, ISBN 2130549586.
the knowledge of the life (1952), Vrin republication, Paris, 1998,2000, ISBN 2711611329.
formation of the concept of reflex with XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries , PUF, Paris, 1955.
with Georges Lapassade, Jean Piquerol, Jacques Ulmann: Of the development to the evolution at the XIXe century (1962), Paris, PUF/Quadrige, 2003, ISBN 2130538355.
Studies of history and philosophy of sciences concerning the alive ones and the life (1968) 7th réed. Vrin, Paris, 1990.ISBN 2711601080
the brain and the thought , 1980, in G. Canguilhem , philosopher, histrorien of sciences, 19992, p. 11 to 33, ISBN 2226062017
Life and Regulation articles of Encyclopedia Universalis (1974), 2nd ED. Encyclopedia Universalis Editor, Paris, 1989.
Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences (1977) the 4th pulling of the 2nd ED. Increased, Vrin, Paris, 2000.
health, vulgar concept and philosophical (1988), Sands, Pine-Balma, 1990, ISBN 2907530348.
Life and died question of Jean Cavaillès , ED.: Combined, 1998, ISBN 2911188179
Écrits on medicine , ED.: Threshold, coll: Field freudien, 2002, ISBN 2020551705

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